LONDON, Ont. — After more than eight weeks of witnesses and 190 exhibits, evidence in the high-profile murder trial of a man charged in the death of Ontario schoolgirl Victoria (Tori) Stafford wrapped up Tuesday with the testimony of a grandmother.

Lawyers representing Michael Rafferty opened and closed the accused's defence by calling only one witness: a woman who picked up her grandchildren at the elementary school on the day the eight-year-old girl disappeared three years ago.

Amid widespread speculation, his legal team elected to not call Rafferty to the stand to testify on his own behalf. His trial began on March 5.

The defence is expected to present the 12-member jury with its closing statements Friday. The Crown will do the same next Monday. Following that, presiding Ontario Justice Thomas Heeney will deliver instructions and the jury will be sequestered to deliberate on whether Rafferty should be convicted or acquitted of the charges.

Stafford was last seen on April 8, 2009 outside Oliver Stephens Public School in Woodstock, Ont., a small city west of Toronto. Her decomposing remains were found on July 19, 2009, more than two hours away in a field near Mount Forest, Ont.

On Tuesday, the 60-year-old woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, testified that she saw the little girl happily leaving school that day with a woman wearing a white, puffy ski jacket.

The defence's witness told the court she was sitting and waiting in a car for her grandchildren and their mother to come out after school that day.

The woman was parked in the school's driveway, near school buses that were being loaded with children. That's when she saw a dark-haired woman with a white puffy jacket walk past the buses and into the front doors of the school.

Moments later, her family members arrived and drove off.

As the car was heading down the main street near the school, the witness recalled seeing the white-jacketed woman again. But this time, she was with a young girl.

"The little girl who was with her was happy, skipping, talking a mile a minute," said the witness. "I assumed that the person she was talking to was her mother."

She said the woman in the white jacket, who was not carrying a purse, appeared to have a "stern" look on her face. She was not speaking to the child.

"It seemed like she was on a mission," the woman told the court.

She added that she did not know Rafferty and admitted she was "not happy" about testifying for the defence.

Under cross-examination, Crown attorney Michael Carnegie suggested that in two statements she made to police on April 11, 2009 and May 26, 2009, she had been vague on these details.

He questioned whether she actually remembered them or if she had been clouded by the extensive coverage of the high-profile case.

Days following Stafford's disappearance, a surveillance video was widely released, showing the young girl walking with a then-unidentified dark-haired woman in a white jacket.

"Is it possible ma'am that you've seen the . . . video like we have, over and over again. Is that what is affecting your memory? Are you sure?" Carnegie asked her a number of times.

But the witness stood her ground, and told him that she had been drawn to the woman because she was wearing a winter jacket on a warm April day.

During the Crown's case — which ended last week — prosecutors called 61 witnesses. Among those was one of Rafferty's former girlfriends, Terri-Lynne McClintic.

McClintic, 21, is currently serving a life sentence for Stafford's death after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in April 2010.

She testified that she was the woman in the white jacket who lured the child away from the school that day at Rafferty's urging. Prior to Tuesday, the court had not heard that McClintic may actually have gone into the school prior to the kidnapping.

After she got Stafford into Rafferty's car, McClintic alleges the three then drove out of the city to buy drugs, a hammer and garbage bags, before stopping at a rural field near Mount Forest, Ont.

There, McClintic says the girl repeatedly was raped, which caused McClintic to snap due to memories of her own childhood molestation. This caused her to kick and stomp the girl before grabbing the claw hammer and bludgeoning her to death.

The blond girl's body was then wrapped in garbage bags and buried in a nearby rock pile with Rafferty's help, she said.

Court has heard that DNA, highly likely to be a match to Stafford's later was found in Rafferty's car and on his gym bag.

The car back seat in Rafferty's 2003 Honda Civic, where the child allegedly had been raped, was never recovered. A number of his neighbours testified they saw a back seat sitting outside Rafferty's home a few days after Stafford went missing.

McClintic testified that following the murder, the couple drove to a car wash in Cambridge, Ont., where they cleaned out the car and threw away the hammer and their clothing.

Rafferty's phone records and accompanying cell tower information shown in court corroborated the route McClintic said the couple took to the field in Mount Forest and back to Woodstock that night.

Throughout this trial, Rafferty's defence lawyer, Dirk Derstine, repeatedly has tried to portray his client as a horrified spectator in the abduction and murder of the girl.

Rafferty refutes the girl had been raped, a fact that cannot be supported with DNA evidence. Stafford's remains were decomposed by the time she was found.

According to the defence, McClintic, who has been in trouble with the law on numerous occasions, was the mastermind behind the murder, and initially had taken the girl as part of a drug debt.

Stafford's mother, Tara McDonald, testified that she had met McClintic briefly, when she went to buy OxyContin painkillers.

The girl's father, Rodney Stafford, says the Crown presented a strong case these last few weeks, but the family had still wanted to hear Rafferty's account of what happened.

"There are lots of unanswered questions," he said. "We never really got all the truth."

Even though legal proceedings are nearing an end, he said his family would never be able to fully move on.

"Our lives have been altered forever," said Rodney Stafford. "The only thing we can do about it is continue moving forward."

Throughout most of the day, Rafferty, who was dressed in a grey, three-piece suit, appeared aloof as his defence wrapped up its case. At the end of the day, he stood up to speak to one of his lawyers and could be seen smiling from the prisoner's box.

CLEVELAND — A 12-year-old boy who had a pellet gun when he was shot by police died as a result of his own actions, and the city of Cleveland isn’t to blame, its lawyers said in response to a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the child’s family.